Alienation
Co-author: Meike Schalk
Exhibition: A Lucky Strike. Kunst findet Stadt
Location: GAK, Bremen, Germany
Year: 2005
Curator: Gabriele Mackert, Horst Griese
Courtesy: The artist
Photo: Apolonija Šušteršič
Video: Alienation / Entfremdung
Filmprogramme for the Space Cinema in the Space Center: THX-1138 (G Lucas, 1971), Dark Star (J Carpenter, 1974), Solaris (A Tarkowskij, 1972)
The project looks into the urban transformation of the Harbour Area in Bremen, more precisely, Bremen’s first and still controversial megaproject known as the Space Park. The Space Park was conceived as one of Europe’s largest shopping malls, which actually never saw the opening of a single shop. The mall was planned for eleven years, but only the Space Center opened in 2003, and worked for nine months before it closed down. The last surviving part is the multiplex cinema CineSpace.
The video Alienation focuses on the entertainment part of the Space Center. It consists of a set of questions concerning the gap or alienation between investment politics and urban planning procedures on the one hand, and the often far away everyday local life on the other. In this sense, the video produces a critical reflection on the mechanisms of the globalized shopping culture in contradiction with the local reality, in discussion with the various agents concerned, such as the politicians, the concept developer, a city planner, the users of the facilities, and the local inhabitants.
The one-night science-fiction film program, curated for the commercial multiplex cinema CineSpace —the only still functioning part of the Space Park— contextualizes the documentary video. The film program is composed of three early sci-fi movies (THX-1138, G. Lucas, 1971), Dark Star (J. Carpenter, 1974), Solaris (A. Tarkovsky, 1972), which discuss the demise of a future society, which in fact looked rather similar to our present society, a mere thirty years later. They envisioned a dystopian reality, which was characterized by prohibition, war, pollution, and dehumanization. All the different narratives seem to focus on the overcoming of alienation in the search for a more genuine life experience. However, the breakdown of a rather short-sighted economic concept could be taken by decision makers as a sign to work stronger from within a local context in including the participation of inhabitants in future plans, as well as taken by locals as a call to involve themselves in the discussion of the future of their cities.